MOVIE REVIEW: Hellbound (1994) – Chuck Norris Satanic Madness

June 27th, 2012 Geno

By Geno McGahee

I love Chuck Norris. He is one of the best action stars of all time and he is known for kicking the shit out of monsters. He ruled in THE HERO AND THE TERROR, took no prisoners in SILENT RAGE and was the man in MISSING IN ACTION, but now we have him fighting a demon named “Lockley” played by Christopher Neame. Now Lockley is a big guy that floats and works for the devil. They found a way to defeat him before, but he is loose again and causing trouble.

Scatter (Norris), a Chicago detective and his partner Jackson (Calvin Levels), come across Lockley in a seedy hotel room where he rips the heart out of a rabbi and throws it at Norris. The first twenty minutes of this film was awesome and the maniacal laughing by Neame was priceless, but when the two detectives head over to Israel, it gets pretty shitty.

The eventual showdown was enticing. Norris vs. Satan’s Big Helper…but it turned into a bad comedy and the devilish action was few and far between. There was a little child thief that partnered up with Norris and Jackson and he was incredibly annoying and added to the stupidity. There were a couple of genuine laughs, but there were far more misses than hits and there wasn’t nearly enough action.

Norris finds a love interest and Lockley wants her too, leading to a showdown of showdowns, but what the fuck is Jackson still doing alive? Isn’t his partner supposed to be killed by the bad guy in this? It happened in THE HERO AND THE TERROR! It should have happened here and instead they have his partner live through the entire movie! Can you believe that shit? I was very disappointed that the showdown wasn’t a one on one fight. It should have been Lockley vs. Norris.

We did see some karate kicks land on the chin of the devil guy, but the final showdown proved disappointing. What sucked was that this movie started off with so much promise and fizzled into a slow-moving bad action film. Norris did what he could, but he couldn’t save it. HELLBOUND could have been great and found magic in the first 25 minutes, but lost it quickly and never found it again. I take my hat off to Neame and Norris …they could have been so GREAT!